Category: Everything Else

Tip of the Day: Freecycle

I know a lot of people are extremely fond of Craig’s List, but I’ve found Freecycle to be as good as, or even better than, CL when it comes to finding a new home for stuff. The ‘catch’ is, you can’t get cash for your stuff. You have to give it away. I suppose it’s deeply “hippie dippy Californian” but it works.

Goodwill is excellent for rehoming many things (plus you get a nice tax deduction), but there’s some stuff they don’t take. Moving boxes, for example. I hate throwing perfectly good (and not inexpensive) boxes away when a move is done. Twice now I’ve tried posting ads on CL to get rid of our boxes after a move, and didn’t get any takers. Today, in less than three hours, I found a willing taker for all our extra boxes on Freecycle. And the nice guy who took them promised to Freecycle the boxes in his turn after his move was done. So, the boxes get reused, I feel good and get some space in my living room back. All is well.

If you’ve got some stuff you don’t want to just throw away, and can’t find a new home for it on your own, take a look at Freecycle.

Liar Liar

Which one of these is NOT a liar?

A White House document shows that executives from big oil companies met with Vice President Cheney’s energy task force in 2001 — something long suspected by environmentalists but denied as recently as last week by industry officials testifying before Congress.

No wonder they didn’t want to be under oath in front of Congress.

De-”24″-ing the Torture Issue

Thanks Kevin, well put:

Torture should be flatly illegal because that’s the message we want to send both to our own people and to the rest of the world. Legal torture should be reserved for regimes like Cuba and North Korea, not the United States of America.

However, in the fantastically unlikely 24-esque event that we capture a terrorist who knows the location of a ticking atomic bomb, he’s going to get tortured regardless. The torturer will immediately get pardoned by the president for doing so, and would be unanimously acquitted by a jury even if he weren’t. And I’m fine with that.

So please. Enough with the idiotic ticking time bomb already. If we’re going to talk about torture, let’s talk about how it’s used in the real world.

Friday iTunes Blogging

Haven’t done this in a while … here’s my totally random 10 from iTunes today:

I Like It Like That – Tito Puente
Bon Voyage – Vangelis
Hear the Voices – The Manhattan Transfer
The Safety Dance – Men Without Hats
Zanzibar – Billy Joel
With Every Breath I Take – City of Angels (Original Broadway Cast)
Land Of Confusion – Phil Collins
I Guess I’ll Miss The Man – Pippin (Original Broadway Cast)
H.M.S. Pinafore – My Gallant Crew, Good Morning – Gilbert & Sullivan
Everyday – Phil Collins